Racism: in search of a definition

Racism, like anti-Semitism, is central to processes that lead to the worst outcomes for humanity. In order to combat racism, it is critical to provide a pertinent definition comprehensible to all. The definition of racism used by the Camp des Milles has been developed by a multi-disciplinary scientific council over a ten-year period pulling together the entire content of the Camp des Milles museography. This definition is discussed every day in school workshops and adult training seminars, during which participants can not only sharpen the scientific concept and the civic message for all types of publics but also enrich the analysis of common representations and, in return, contribute to the work of researchers and trainers responsible for nurturing this dialogue.

Two definitions of racism regularly emerge from these discussions with young and old attendees, and professionals and non-professionals:

• • A narrow definition explicitly inspired by exact sciences, including biology and genetics
• • A much broader definition suggested by social sciences, sociology, and anthropology.

Given the rise of racist theories in many countries, and indeed within the academic community, on the one hand, and of extreme violence, on the other, which when combined could be explosive, these definitions pinpoint the responsibility of scientists with regard to this question.

In addition to defining racism and analyzing the scientific basis and its own history, the Fondation du Camp des Milles also serves to alert people to the societal implications of an increasing tendency by the exact sciences (biology, genetics, and neuroscience) to borrow concepts from the social sciences which could, given the ‘return to race,’ lead to their participation in the legitimization of racist theories. Its role must be to challenge researchers on the limitations inherent in science and, indeed, in reason.

The definition developed and diffused by the Memorial Site of the Camp des Milles states: ‘racism is a collection of hostile ideas and behaviors towards people based on the belief in the biological existence of several human ‘races’ and in an inequality amongst them; it can end in the worst of tragedies’(Chouraqui 2015).⁵ This definition does not include its extension into daily language which relates to indecisive and fluctuating social or cultural characteristics. It also conveys the idea that to reject a person because of the supposed inferiority of the group to which they apparently belong is in fact a form of discrimination, but not necessary of racism. This definition thus has a double interpretation: the pseudo-scientific belief in the existence of races; and, the conviction that races are unequal. The fight against racism, if it is included in teachings/ education about inequalities and, in particular, against the damage caused by a hierarchical compartmentalization of populations (see Seme-lin, 2005; De Swaan, 2015; Chouraqui, 2015), must not ignore the importance of deconstructing the concept of race as developed by human and natural sciences. Although, for obvious reasons given the

Against the expansion of racism 33 ‘anthropological caesura’ that is the Holocaust (Bensoussan 2013), there was clearly a regression in racial theories in the post-war period. We have observed a worrying return to biological constructions of race in the hard sciences in recent years. It is not surprising that this situation is accompanied by the rise of authoritarian and extremist ideologies almost everywhere in the world, in both the United States and in Europe.

The return of race

The return of the race factor today can be seen in the work of a growing number of researchers who consider that racial categories are ‘bio-geneti-cally valid departure points’ (Fullwiley 2008) or as an operational concept; as, for example, in the theory of ‘genetic clusters’ (Shiao et al. 2012). The issue here is less the reality, more the new character of this tendency (cf. Larregue 2017).

In the social sciences, such a return is also obvious and benefits from a dual process: an ideological movement within the social sciences expressed in terms of ethnicities, and an epistemological approach that leans towards a growing integration of methods and concepts used in hard sciences, notably biology and genetics, in social sciences.

Ethnicity and race

The reappearance of race in the social sciences was masked for a while by the use of a concept of ethnicity. Ethnicity refers to the belief in a shared origin and to cultural elements, while race refers to natural, phenotypical characteristics, such as skin color. Ethnic affiliation can be perceived as positive and based on a choice, which can be multiple and flexible, whereas racial affiliation implies a sense of experienced inferiority, a clear division, and a definitive assignation (Perraudin 2014). This is undoubtedly the distinction that international conventions use when defining genocide as targeting ‘a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.” The French text goes even further by extending it to groups determined by ‘any other arbitrary criterion,’ suggesting that previous criteria were not arbitrary. Race cannot be an arbitrary criterion. In the single reference ‘to discrimination’ in French law, the term is deliberately clarified by adding ‘purported’ to the word ‘race,’ an additional qualification always absent from other aspects of French law.

Social sciences have a tendency to fuse, or should we say, ‘confuse,’ the two terms. As a result, articles in social sciences are published in defense of a ‘dual conception’ of race as a socially constructed and genetically identifiable category: this gives rise to ‘ethno-racial’ categories that seek to account for this duality (Perraudin 2014). Such confusion can be found in daily language where racism is seen today as any behavior of rejection not only in terms of race - strictly speaking - or ethnicity, but also in all forms ofdiscrimination (against ‘fat people,’ ‘blondes,’ ‘old people,’ etc.) which both dilutes the racial question and trivializes its ideological foundation.

As has been already noted by Pierre-André Taguieff (1990), use of the vocabulary of ethnicity is in fact a euphemism for racism: it becomes ‘racism without race.’ It is as if certain researchers in the hard sciences see ethnicity as a Trojan horse, from the ethno-racial perspective, by which race can be reintroduced into the scientific debate, the social sciences being attacked as the soft underbelly: from this point of view, as a ‘soft’ science.

The biologization of the social

The introduction of genetics into the social sciences can be seen, in varying proportions, in economics, political science, and sociology, with a growing number of researchers actively promoting ‘the integration of methods, concepts and data generated by genetics in their studies.’ In particular, biological theories of race are emerging in the field of social anthropology (Larrègue 2017). There are no longer many researchers prepared to think that there are fixed, genetically distinct, and homogeneous human groups, in which physical traits, intellectual aptitudes, and even moral disposition are transmitted by heredity. The geneticist and anthropologist André Langaney wrote in 1992:

the notion of human races is an imprecise way to designate overlapping populations, since the unbelievable diversity does not lend itself to any simple or scientifically acceptable classification. [...] We have inherited the common usage of the words ‘human races’ from a sinister history and a misguided science. [...] Let us remember that it no longer belongs in today’s vocabulary of science and that it is thus arbitrary.

(Langaney et al. 1992: 62)

Nevertheless, there is a great risk that we will see socio-cultural behavior interpreted in terms of neurological determinants referring to biologically racial groupings. However, this does not prevent scientists from using the term with growing frequency. A survey of titles and summaries of doctoral theses in France shows that the occurrence of ‘race’ has increased three- or fourfold in the last ten years. This tendency can be found in almost equal numbers in natural sciences and social sciences: biology, medicine, and psychology (the largest category), sociology, and anthropology.'

The worst is not always manifest. We must not throw out the baby of biology with the bath water of race. It is simply a question of refusing, in the name of science and of ethnicity, the recurrent pseudo-biological axioms that contribute to a theory of race. That is to say, to remain vigilant in neuroscientific and biological research, which is just as capable, if not more, as social sciences, given their guaranteed dominant position, of ideological derivatives or simply of dangerous assumptions.